Gary Younge does it again with his excellent essay, “The Good Victim” in the May 9th Nation.

He makes the excellent point that “there are few things as corrosive as the notion of a worthy victim.”

In America, Rosa Parks was a worthy victim of discrimination when she refused to give up her seat on a bus in Montgomery.

However, Younge points out that Claudette Colvin who had the exact same experience as Parks on a bus in Montgomery was rejected by the local civil rights leaders. She was too young (15), too dark, and too poor. She was single and shortly after the incident was pregnant. She wasn’t a “worthy victim.”

Younge goes on to say that part of the insidiousness of the Don Imus scandal was treated by much of the press that it wasn’t so much what he said but who he said it about.

Younge quotes Snoop Dogg to point out that “ho’s” aren’t collegiate basketball players, they are women “in the hood that aint doing shit.”

Finally, he brings up the accuser of the Duke University lacrosse players. She is now fair game now that it’s been determined that she was not a worthy victim.